If your close friends or family are thieves, charlatans and liars, you’ll soon adapt their habits, their ways.

If your close friends or family are lazy and don’t have two nickels to rub together, a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of…you’ll be next. Guaranteed.

You see we become the lowest common denominator of those we surround ourselves with.
But wait…it’s also what you feed you mind that’s important, too.

My kids aren’t part of any social media (Flakebook, twitter, etc.) but I imagine if they were, I’d be reading some of the same childish retorts or posts.

If you are truly pursuing excellence, you must surround yourself with it. If you are in pursuit of a higher income, you have to surround yourself with those who have far more than yours. You have to not just witness, but adapt their (good) habits.

You have to become good at reading people and “movements” or trends in order to protect and defend that for which you’ve worked hard. You have to, in essence, have your own built-in, shock-proof shit detector on, at all times.

And, it must be operating at full-strength no matter what you’re doing.

That means interacting with employees and allowing their problems to become yours. Vendors and what they’re pitching. Consultants and what “new thing” they are selling you now for which they offer no proof that it works. Idiots who have more time on their hands than patients in their chairs (THINK: Are America’s wealthiest, happiest Dentists really spending their day on DentalTown or some other social media? Or, are they busting a**, nose-to-grindstone, ignoring what losers are doing and remaining focused?). And so on.

If I had to give just two bits of advice to help your ads be more effective during the next 2 months it’d be:

– Relevance
– Pattern Interrupt

First, relevance. You have not just 2 major holidays to contend with.

Be sure your ads capitalize on some aspect of the holiday surrounding them when they are released, dropped, debuted, etc.

Incorporate the holiday into the theme of the ad. It will make it relevant to the conversations in the minds of your prospective patients and it’ll get more readership…and eyeballs are what we are after.

So if you’re dropping an ad this week it ought be themed T-giving and then in December, Christmas, etc.

Next, your ad must, must, must stick out. It must create or facilitate a pattern interrupt. It can’t look like all the other dental ads. It can’t smack of just another postcard in the mail, just another implant dentistry ad, just another ad of any kind. It has to command attention by way of feel, the unusual ad copy (like an outrageous guarantee) or look.

With the exception of the interwebs (online = TV), most media you’re using, you have sight and feel to work with. So, those have to pop to differentiate your ad – color (or lack of as with the retro ad series), design elements (retro vs. modern as example) and texture are critical.

Getting new patients this time of year ain’t easy. It’s not a laydown for most. It’s a slog and every dollar invested, every ad ran, all must work doubly hard this time of year. There is a ton of competition for the consumer dollar.

Begs the question: Should you be promoting emergency dentistry services during this time to attract patients from outside your normal realm of “ideal patient” to generate cash and keep a few that want to stay beyond the 911 relationship.

In my mind, any income beats no income. Your banker doesn’t care what kind of dentistry you are doing. And, where our economy is going in the next 12 months, no one knows. You should be prepared mentally, and from a marketing perspective, for the worst.

If you have more than 5 to 10 years left in Dentistry, you’ll want to start considering how the income pyramid is changing, has changed and will continue to change.

The middle class is shrinking. The top is growing. The bottom is growing faster, and most in the middle, headed to the bottom. Why’s this important to you?

Depending on what patient class you predominately serve, your business model and for sure, marketing model, will be forced to change and adapt. If you serve the lower class, a lot of Medicaid patients, or your practice location is in a dying area, I’m waiving a massive yellow flag of caution at you. Unless you change your business model to deal with your patient base’s economic reality, you’ll find yourself dealing with tighter and tighter margins. If income per patient is dropping (run a Dentrix report from 2008 to 2018-YTD and compare), then you really have a problem that must be addressed now. Not later. Maybe even a re-location is in order. If your income per patient has dropped, that means you’re having to see more pts to make the same amount of money, and for sure, your overhead must be pushed down to the bare minimum to compensate in the short-term. However, just because your income/pt is down, there may be other factors at-hand that need to be reviewed. Reach out to me if that’s the case.

If you’re in the middle, you need to make a decision. If your patients are predominately blue collar with a mix of upper and lower incomes, my advice: Skew to a higher income. Change the dynamics of your physical plant, your location, your staff, what you offer (as example, affluent patients have a different motivation for going to the dentist – and they’ll pay more to go less), etc., to cater to a higher income. And, most importantly, you’ll likely need to change the way you market your practice and to whom you market.

In the near future, as this income shift plays out and the middle continues to wither on the vine, there will be a more clearly defined place for each kind of practice, but the model of each are so different that co-existing in the same physical space and location are going to be more and more challenging if not impossible. You will need to make a choice. And, the existence of chain dentistry will make this easier for you.

At many offices, this economic reality is setting in. Plan and do demographic research now to find out where your patient base lies. You may need a location change, a facelift, and a different approach to marketing – making sure your message gets into the hands of those you want to attract. That means working harder and more diligently at generating referrals. And, it means making sure every team member takes advantage of every selling opportunity. The alternative is ugly.

Awhile back, I bought a book, Focus, The Hidden Driver of Excellence. I find it sadly ironic that I made it to page 3 before I put it down, interrupted by something important, I’m sure. The good news is, I picked it back up and am now back into it. The title is an interesting commentary on our lives today: we are FRAGMENTED during the best of our days, struggling to remain focused. The constant vying for our attention by a million things both important and totally unimportant, have created problems we can’t yet fathom. In business and our personal lives. I am guilty of it. No doubt you are more so than you’d like to admit.

But, to achieve excellence in ANY FIELD requires real focus.

Let’s talk fragmentation first…Take your smart phone for example. How many times each day do you look at it. Do you ever turn it off? Or, do you leave it on, afraid something might happen that requires your attention? I know people that sleep with theirs on, next to their head. My friend, Mike, a construction company owner, turns his off at 6pm every day. If you want to talk to him, you’d better call before then. And, he doesn’t read text messages. Email does not exist in his world. He’s got a “guy” that takes care of that for him. He delegated the fragmentation so he can focus on the highest and best use of his time which is finding the next “job” for his men. He has a very narrow focus.

I’ve intentionally done away with a lot of fragmentation. One of those is working in an office with 20 or 30 others pulling me hither and thon. I cannot function long-term in that environment. It lead to burn-out the first time. Some brag about being in such environment. I’m at my personal best working solo, focused, carefully choosing what gets my attention. (Note: You can be in a “group” working environment and pull this off…it’s doable!) Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy interaction with others. I just get to control when that is by leaving my office and hitting meetings for a set period of time, with a deadline always looming so those I do talk to know I have limited time and then it’s on to the “next thing.” When you are not at the chair, FOCUSED, drill in hand, sculpting the next beautiful crown, or, relieving nagging pain from a patient, you can adapt these same efficiencies and habits, if you choose to.

Now, to the “myth of 10,000 hours” and something I’ve gleaned from the book I mention above…and the bigger point of this Memo. Anders Ericsson, the Florida State University psychologist whose research spawned the 10,000 hour rule of thumb (it takes roughly 10,000 hours of study and work at a particular ‘thing’ to become an expert at a skill or craft) had this to say:

You don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal…You have to tweak the system by pushing…allowing for more errors at first as you increase your limits.

Think of this in the capacity of running your business…An example: Learning what actions by you and each member of your team influences profits. Observing outcomes. Making adjustments. Doing it again. And then repeating the process, over and over and over again. Pushing the limits…

Ericsson goes on to say that the secret of winning is “deliberate practice,” where an expert coach takes you through well-designed training over months or years and you give it your full concentration.

And, check this out: “When practice occurs while we are focusing elsewhere, the brain does not rewire the relevant circuitry for that particular routine.” (This refers to Neuroplasticity – the strengthening of old brain circuits and building of new ones.)

Re-read this post again, when you can really think about the potential you might be robbing yourself of this instant. There’s a reason why some solo dentists produce $40,000 a month and others $200,000 a month. The mystery is solved.

If you are fragmented, without FOCUS and not paying attention to the outcomes and re-adjusting, you’ll continue in the same vein you’re in.

Look at it like this: If every crown you made failed, would you change your technique? Of course. If you’re not getting all you want out of your business or life, change your technique. Change your focus. Adjust your attention from things that do not influence outcomes (like daily distractions) to things that do (behaviors and habits of yours and your employees).

Schedule regular ongoing training every week (2x a week). Train, train and train some more. Start with your mission, vision and core values. Then, expand from there. Cover the “simple” things you expect everyone to know, but most in fact don’t, like, how to answer phones, how to greet visitors that appear at the door, how you want the folks behind the desk to STAND UP and maybe even go around the counter and welcome guests when they arrive, how an office tour is conducted, how money is collected and finances are arranged (Think that’s just a front desk only job? ALL on your team should know how it works so they can talk intelligently about it – because, patients will ask the one who has “no clue!”), how new patients are handled, and on and on and on. If you don’t train on this stuff and do it regularly, how can you expect it to be done the way you want? Oh, and don’t get me wrong, it’s not YOU doing the training, it should be your team leader, department leader, or DAs, hygienists, etc. all chipping in and doing training. What you’ll find is that many of them could not, right now, conduct a training because they have no idea how you’d like to handle much of these simple, small things! Create a calendar with topics and get going. If you do 2 trainings a week at a half-hour each, that’s 8 sessions and a total of 4 hours of training in the next 30 days!

If there is one area the vast majority (95%+) of all business people fall short in, Dentists included, is the follow-up with non-buyers. You know, a prospective pt raises hand, makes appt, shows up, but is, for whatever reason, not ready to pull the trigger on a treatment plan. Then, the dust starts. There’s a bird, somewhere, that when threatened, starts stirring up the dust to camouflage itself and then escape. It’s a natural defense mechanism. Patients have this, too. Except, while they understand the logic you’re using, and, they know it’s in their best interest to pull the trigger, even sometimes if they want it bad enough, they can’t for whatever reason, sign on the line. So, the dust starts.

Sometimes it’s financial. Sometimes they are scared. Other times, they don’t know if their spouse will kick their butt or not. And, yes, there are other excuses, but these are a few of the more common.

It’s at this point when dentists bail. They refuse to invest more time, energy, effort or money into the pt that said, “No…” and what the pt most likely said was, “No, not yet.” But, most don’t wait to listen to the “…not yet…” part. It falls on deaf ears and the dentist, insulted, storms off, writing the potential patient off as a source of treatment income.

BIG, deadly, DUMB mistake. By the way, it’s not just dentists. This kind of reaction is alive and well in EVERY industry. Example: Last week, on a Monday, I made 3 calls to companies that do driveway re-sealing and pavement repairs. Mine’s nearly ¼ mile long and the last sealcoat was in 2003, not long after we moved in. That’s 12 years ago. It’s not a small job. Probably a $2500 to $3500 project if I three-times the last time we had it done. All three said, “OK, we’ll get a guy out to bid it.” It’s now been a week and not word ONE from any of ‘em. Worse, not ONE of them will follow-up. I was prepared to give one of them money. All they had to do was show up. If this happens ten to twenty times a year to these guys, there is potential lost sales of $25,000 to $35,000 and up per year. Idiocy and insane business suicide. However, I am sure they have an excuse. Good thing they are not a franchisee of mine, I’d whack ‘em.